


this is it

by S_Strilonde



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, M/M, Short One Shot, Theyre Like Fourteen And Dave Is Gonna Have A Bad Time, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:53:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Strilonde/pseuds/S_Strilonde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This happens more often than not these days. </p>
<p>It isn’t as if you don’t want to hear what he’s saying, you just get so caught up in the small details that you forget to listen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is it

This happens more often than not these days.   
  
It isn’t as if you don’t want to hear what he’s saying, you just get so caught up in the small details that you forget to listen. 

The stray eyelash on his cheek or the grass stains on the back of his shirt or the fact that he’s managed to store the entire sky in his eyes yet, somehow, he still had room for a few stars too. So you just nod along and interject a few “mmhmm"s and "yeah"s when he pauses. Unfortunately, your timing isn’t good enough. He gives you a weird look after you throw in another ‘yeah’.   
  
"Huh?”   
  
You blink, shaking your head a little. “What?”   
  
He laughs slightly. “I asked if you’ve gotten your schedule yet, dummy. I got mine yesterday and I want to know if we have any classes together.”   
  
Oh. A flush spreads across your cheeks like a red wine stain on carpet. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t looked. Maybe.” You clear your throat. That was cool.   
  
“Alright, whatever dude. I won’t pester you about it.” He has a funny look on his face, a cross between confusion and amusement.   
  
“No, it’s cool. I just haven’t seen it yet. It’s still summer, so I’m not really seein’ the point in thinking about it. Bro says high school is a load of shit anyway.” You shift your position slightly, tugging on the already thin patch of grass beside you. This was your spot. You and John always sit here in the long late-summer afternoons when you can’t think of anything else to do but watch traffic. It has been this way for as long as you’ve lived across the street from him. (Forever, as far as you’re concerned.)  
  
He shrugs. “Your bro says a lot of things, doesn’t he?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
And it’s quiet again, for a couple seconds. John never really knew how to deal with silence so he starts going on again about the classes he’s taking this year. His voice starts to blend in with the sounds of the cars from below and you’re already gone. You look at him from behind the dark lenses of your shades (your favorite ones, the ones he gave you when you turned thirteen the year before last) and take in the curve of his lips as he speaks, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes and how the afternoon sunlight turns his unruly hair into a glowing halo around his face and it makes your chest ache.   
  
He must have noticed that you zoned out again and he’s snapping his fingers in front of your face. “Hey, ground control to Dave! Are you still in there?” It makes you jump.   
  
“Shit, sorry.” You run a hand through your hair, looking down and away from his face because looking at it makes your stomach fill with helium. He just elbows you in the ribs playfully and you do not flinch or tell him that it hurt.   
  
“If I was boring you to death, you could have just told me!” He laughs a little. You want to tell him the truth. Maybe it would be okay if you just told him that you were staring at his lips and wondering how they felt and maybe, maybe he would tell you that he’s wondered the same about yours. Maybe then you wouldn’t be so confused. But you won’t. Instead, you just shrug and mutter another quiet apology under your breath. You make a note of how rough John’s fingers are when he grabs your arm as if he just had the greatest idea the world, your world, had ever seen. Physical contact has never been so desirable, yet dreadful.    
  
“Hey, I know what we could do instead! Remember when we were twelve and we would always go on the roof of your house when it got late to fuck around at the end of the day?” Your eyes meet his again, and his glasses are crooked and something in you wants to fix them but maybe he would think that was 'weird’ and it would cross some kind of invisible line. Your hand is frozen against the grass. Fuck.    
  
“Of course I remember, you almost pushed me off that one time. Scared the hell out of me.” He gets up, and you use your last remaining chance to touch him by letting him pull you up by the arm he had not yet let go of.   
  
“It was pretty funny.”   
  
It wasn’t, not at the time. You nod your head anyway.   
  
The walk to your neighborhood is short. John lives in the house just across the street from you and that is how it’s always been. At this point in your life, you wouldn’t change that for the world. He takes a familiar shortcut through some bushes to get to your backyard, digging the dirty old ladder from underneath a tangle of weeds and propping it up against the edge of the roof. It’s as rickety as you remember it being and the nostalgia fills your body with a strange but not unwelcome warmth.   
  
He goes up first, carefully treading each rung as if it could snap under his weight at any time. It probably could, you think. Once he gets to the top, he motions for you to follow him up. The view from the roof is just as you remember it being. Shades of orange and pink skies spreading every which way for miles above the black silhouettes of treetops that barely touch the sky. It’s picturesque, like a scene from a movie. John must see it too, because he isn’t talking either. Just staring. You sit and stare with him for a while until you see him glance at you out of the corner of your eye.   
  
“We haven’t done this in forever.” His eyes go back to the sky in front of you, and you nod. It makes you wonder why you stopped doing it in the first place. Time seems to slow down when you’re watching the world spin from above everyone else, even if it’s only a few feet. Your head isn’t on your body anymore, it’s a part of the sky. You have become of the sky with him.   
  
In this moment, everything is how it should be. Your gaze shifts back to John, who’s looking at the horizon like it’s the first sunset he’s ever seen. Sitting next to him like this, it might as well be. He sees you looking at him and he looks at you and the stars in his eyes are brighter than they’ve ever been and you lean in, your body so much moving faster than your thoughts.   
  
Your lips only touch his for a few seconds, a fumbled connection between dry lips and heavy saliva. You can taste sticky soda on his lips and something else, something distinctly John. There’s so much of him in that tiny second that it feels like you’re being slammed in the chest.  
    
It occurs to you only after you fall back that you  _were_  slammed in the chest.  
    
Suddenly, the roof caves in. The trees around you creak and snap and hit the ground as an earthquake shakes the entire world, ripping thousand-year-old oaks from the earth. The sky you were just a fragment of cracks in shards and falls all around you. John doesn’t notice. He stares at you before bringing the back of his hand slowly up to his lips, rubbing them. Rubbing you away. You can feel parts of your body disappear. He doesn’t look like he can even find words to express how he feels about what just happened, but you can see all of them in the way he’s looking at you.  
    
“I-I’m sorry, I don’t-”   
  
The words don’t even sound like your own. John just shakes his head and turns around, scooting back to the ladder. He only climbs down half of the rungs before jumping to the ground, leaving you alone with the clouds. This is the end, you realize. Everything was over in a matter of seconds. He isn’t going to turn around and decide that he should kiss you back, he is going to walk until he reaches his doorstep and then he will pull the key from underneath the doormat and the moment he puts it in the keyhole, everything will be over.   
  
And in the end, you realize that his eyes were never the sky, they were always the ocean, and you could never get it right. 


End file.
